How I Built a SaaS in a Weekend That Replaces Google Alerts

Google Alerts has been broken for years. It misses most mentions, delivers them days late, and gives you zero context about what was said. I know because I tracked it. Out of 10 real mentions of my brand in a week, Google Alerts caught 2. The paid alternatives (Mention, Brand24) start at $99+/mo and are built for enterprise marketing teams. There's nothing in between for indie founders, freelancers, or small businesses. So I built MentionDrop. Real-time web mention monitoring with AI summaries, for $29/mo. Here's how I did it in a weekend. The Problem I Kept Running Into Someone trashed one of my products on a niche forum. I found out two weeks later when a friend sent me the link. Google Alerts never picked it up. By then, the thread had 40+ replies, and the narrative was set. That was the last straw. I needed something that actually monitored the web in real-time and told me what was being said, not just that a keyword appeared on a page somewhere. The Stack I optimized for speed-to-